Crunch Time

AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION:
I wonder if that there exists some sort of sub-category of live performance. Performance is arguably intentional. Its put on for an audience. But what if the performance was unintentional, like in the context of a camera being pointed at you out of the blue. Your instinctual reaction with the camera could be a form of performance, right? 9 times out of 10 the person on camera will immediately act differently or change their behaviour, because they know they are being recorded. I notice this especially with snapchat; someone will point a camera at me – maybe I’m doing something funny and worth recording – and the moment I notice the camera, my body changes, I fix my posture or say certain things on purpose. My response is almost biological. Is this a form of performance, in that I know that I will be watched by another audience after the fact, through a screen?

Thought #1

AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION:
Digital theatre, or theatre that increasingly incorporates highly digitized technology into its piece, will seemingly only improve through process of trial and error. There will never be a point in time where every technological glitch or error has been solved, because technology itself is not a constant variable. It will always be evolving and adapting. Just when you’ve mastered the use of Technology A, and immersed it successfully, free of error, into a theatre space, Technology B will be invented, and you’ll have to start all over. There will always be something new to try.

Thought #2

AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION:
Is there danger in the pursuit of combining the technological with the theatrical? Is the imagination of the audience member being sacrificed for the convenience and spectacle of technology? In my most memorable experiences of theatre, the performer is used as both an instrument to convey emotion, as well as a tool to manifest imagery or setting for the purpose of the story. It is then the audience member’s duty to supply the imagination necessary to make the impossible, possible, following course with the term “suspension of disbelief” or indulging in “aesthetic distance”. With technology being used nowadays to perhaps, supply the imagination for the audience, through extravagant set designs and digital interfaces, it begs the question: is technology subverting traditional theatre values?

Thought #3

AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION:
Performance is seemingly everywhere. It’s happening even when we think it’s not. In this digital age, it’s so easy to become a person of vanity, to get lost in the “black mirror” of your phone screen, and with this comes subtle adjustments to your everyday interactions, both physical and virtual. You’re at a party. Your friend pulls out her phone to take a group-selfie on snapchat – oh, wait no, it’s a video. All at once, without even speaking, everyone in the frame adjusts their posture, their expression, ensures their drink is visible, and upon the stage being ready, with everyone on deck, in their positions, the lights go up, like some invisible director just called “Action!”, and she hits the record button. 10 seconds later, she says it’s not good enough. She calls another rehearsal, and re-records, maybe 3 more times, until she deems it good enough for her snapchat audience to see.

Thought #4

AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION:
Compare and contrast Twitter and Snapchat. They both, of course, have different functions. But they arguably serve the same purpose. They provide the ability for users to communicate their experiences to an online audience, most importantly, in real time. Twitter and Snapchat seem heavily focused in the concept of liveness and real-time shared experience. Their functioning seems more urgent than other social media platforms. Tweets, arguably have an expiry date to them, in which they become irrelevant over time, and snapchat stories only have a life span of 24 hours. These platforms no doubt revitalize our perception of the present, and continue to shape the way we look or understand at real-time events, experienced through a phone or laptop screen.

andrewgilbride